“The Parthenon, writes Joan Breton Connelly, ‘has become the icon of western art, the very symbol of democracy itself.’ But it’s that very conventional wisdom that Connelly, a professor of classics and art history at New York University, aims to subvert with her new book, The Parthenon Enigma, Her theory revolves around the meaning of the original 525-foot-long frieze, located on the exterior colonnade of the temple. For centuries, scholars have argued that the frieze’s grand procession of soldiers and chariots, musicians and maidens, and figures bearing offerings for sacrifice depicted the Panathenaia, a yearly festival of games and religious rites in ancient Athens. In her radical reinterpretation, Connelly argues that the frieze in fact celebrated a mythical tale of human sacrifice…”